From Zen cherry blossoms to the Noh stage. From Hawaiian breathing lessons to an Okinawan rodeo. From Balinese wise men to the Egyptian pyramids. It all started in small town Minnesota and it ended much later than the doctors said it would. In his early 20s, Wayne Stier was diagnosed with cancer and a less than 50 percent chance of living more than 5 years. He and his wife Mars responded by seizing the day and moving to Japan.

This extraordinary memoir is full of memorable lines and lessons. Some funny. “Rule of slapstick—stand up quick and pretend it didn’t happen.” Some koan-like: “A dog’s bark is a dot pointing out the silence.” Stier’s writing will change the way you look at the world. His writing is an act of discovery and rediscovery, from the landlocked plains of the Midwest to the slope of an active volcano. In Japan, Wayne became a Kyogen actor and the second foreigner ever to perform on the Noh stage. On the Big Island of Hawaii he built his home and art studio, with living trees forming the corner posts, and wrote the myth of his own life.

In Bali, an old man told Wayne to look at the sky—filled with shining stars even when the sun is shining. Stars when the Sun Shines is about looking at the world through continuously new eyes. It’s bound to change the way the reader looks at the world as well. Stier’s writing burns through illusions to conclusions about a life so full he forgot he was dying, until he did, in Hawaii, on May 30, 2009, weeks after his 62nd birthday.

For readers who gravitate to Eat, Pray, Love because of its spiritual odyssey or The Last Lecture because of its message to live in the moment in spite of impending finality, they will have an interest in Stars When the Sun Shines because it offers a combination of both.

Wayne Stier was an actor, writer, sculptor, humorist, teacher, world traveler, whose mission in life was to look and to see, wherever he was, whoever he met, whatever he was doing. He published three previous books and numerous magazine articles. He lived with his wife, Mars Cavers, in Ocean View, Hawaii.See all titles by this author